Daido Upland Rice

Daido is a mid season, landrace upland rice variety from Mongolia. It flowered in 76 days from transplanting and matured 117 days from transplant. Daido is fairly tall (3 1/2 foot) with moderate tillering and good yields of short grain brown rice. It did have some minor lodging issues during periods of heavy rainfall. Daido proved to be another tasty brown rice variety. It was very soft and somewhat creamy in texture. Not as creamy as the Zerawchanica and not firm like Amaura. Somewhere in-between. The flavor was slightly sweet and, as usual with brown rice, nutty. Overall I was very pleased. Daido is a little more difficult to dehull than other varieties. I had to pass it through my Brill dehuller 4 times for 98% hulless kernels. Most other varieties only require 2 or 3 passes.

Rice seeds should be soaked in water 24 hours before planting. I start my plants indoors in April in plug flats, 50’s and transplant into beds after the last frost date. I recommend not leaving plants in flats for more than three weeks as the starts will yellow easily and weaken when root-bound. Here in Northern Indiana, I plant my rice plugs the last week of May. I plant into 4′ wide beds. This makes adding bird netting over the tops of the plants an easy chore using 5′ t-posts and twine. The plants are spaced 9″ apart in the beds. Upland rice requires about the same amount of water as corn, around 1″ per week during the growing season. The plants will begin to form seed heads in August. At maturity the rice husks will turn to a golden brown and the rice seed inside will be hard. I harvest in late September, cutting the whole plant and bundling into groups of 4. These bundles are then hung in my drying shed for a few weeks until the plant is fully dry. At this point threshing is easy by hand (pulling the grains off) or using a threshing machine. I use a treadle (foot) powered thresher. Rice has an inedible husk that needs to be removed before eating. The most primitive way to accomplish this is by pounding the grains with a stick or mallet on a wood surface (tree stump) in order to loosen the husks. There are small rice dehullers available but very difficult to locate. Brill Engineering offers online tutorials on how to build a small dehuller using easy to locate “off the shelf” parts. http://www.brillengineering.com/

Alternative planting method. In the spring of 2017 I experimented with direct seeding rice into beds in late May. I had success with early maturing varieties. I recently learned that rice can be direct seeded even earlier; possibly at the beginning of May or late April. I would suggest you conduct some small trials if you are interested in this method. Transplanting has proven to be very reliable for 5 years in a row. Direct seeding is a new concept for me and I can not guarantee the results for any given variety. I am growing in a zone 5b (moving towards a 6).